Saturday, 2 June 2007

PERCEPTION My sweet husband asked me on the ‘phone what Cyrus was like. I told him “like any other Mediterranean island, hot, dusty, with half finished buildings, deeply rutted roads and inadequate plumbing (“Toilet paper must be placed in the receptacle provided. Do not flush it down the toilet”)”. And that was the best of the island. I still hadn’t seen the spiders, snakes or bugs. To be fair though, they do speak good English and drive on the right (which is the left) side of the road.

Am I being pedantic and picky? You bet your sweet life I am. I have a perfectly good, clean and comfortable home. Why would I want to subject myself to seven days of hellish discomfort with a plastic band stapled to my wrist and odd, suspicious, noxious and, incidentally, probably health endangering smells (maybe emanating from the toilet paper bin, or worse?). This is not to mention the trauma educing fear of woman and possibly child eating spiders that are bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a house. Nah, give me grey driving rain and high winds every time. Even our tossing Government seemed attractive!

BUT, although there were others at the “holiday village” that shared my opinion, there were many that loved it. They praised the fly blown buffet food that sat uncovered for endless hours in the heat. They loved the lumpy bedded dingy apartments. They raved about the pool that someone kept pooing in and lapped up the bingo evenings. Not my cup of tea I’m afraid.

The saving grace was that we had great weather and my two great granddaughters and their mother enjoyed themselves. The two little girls, who have incurably sunny and optimistic personalities anyway, made countless friends. In fact the 6 year old wanted to live there. And my granddaughter, the sun goddess that she is, ended up looking even more gorgeous than ever